Cause-specific mortality in wild animals
Understanding the causes of wild animal mortality to inform animal welfare interventions
This profile is tailored towards students studying agricultural sciences, biological sciences, engineering and maths, however we expect there to be valuable open research questions in this area that could be pursued by students in other disciplines.
Why is this a pressing problem?
The welfare of wild animals is poorly understood, having received little research up until recently despite their vast numbers. One of the few things we can say with confidence is that only a small minority of all wild animals who are born survive to adulthood. Death often entails extreme suffering; and for those individuals who die young, the process of dying may comprise a significant proportion of their lifetime.
Understanding how and why wild animals die is therefore crucial for understanding the current state of welfare in nature, as well as identifying ways to improve it.
To provide the most value for understanding the welfare of individual wild animals, a few shifts in approach are recommended relative to most past research on the topic, including a focus on species with the largest population sizes, as well as on juvenile animals and the causes of death that most commonly affect them. Ultimately, reliable data on cause-specific mortality rates for specific populations can be incorporated into ‘multiple decrement life tables’ to identify opportunities for improving wild animal welfare by averting early deaths by a specific cause or substituting a less painful manner of death for another.
Because the field has been relatively neglected, there is plenty of opportunity for applying the current best practices to new species and ecosystems, or developing new methods.
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Hecht, Luke (2021) The Importance of Considering Age When Quantifying Wild Animals’ Welfare, Biological Reviews
Hill, Jacob E., et al. (2019) Cause-Specific Mortality of the World’s Terrestrial Vertebrates, Global Ecology and Biogeography
Kéry, Marc & Michael Schaub (2011) Bayesian Population Analysis using WinBUGS – A Hierarchical Perspective, Academic Press
Peterson, Robert K. D., et al. (2009) Mortality Risk in Insects, Environmental Entomology
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The Wild Animal Initiative and Animal Ethics support researchers studying wild animal welfare.
Wild Animal Initiative: You may want to check our their list of research priorities, apply to join their online research community and/or consider signing up for their newsletter
Animal Ethics: They also run a newsletter to stay up-to-date with news in this area.
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New York University has a new program on wild animal welfare.
The EA animal welfare fund may fund research in this area, as can the Wild Animal Initiative.
Contributors: This profile was last updated 14/06/2023. Thanks to Luke Hecht for first creating this profile. Learn more about how we create our profiles.
